Settings: The Celestial Toyroom

This next story is, arguably, the most divisive in the show’s history. According to review aggregator websites, fans are pretty much evenly split as to whether it’s a masterpiece, complete rubbish, or somewhere in between. Given the simple nature of the plot, it’s unlikely that the fact that it’s largely missing makes much difference here, especially now that an animated version exists. Whether or not it would succeed as an RPG scenario is, perhaps, something that equally relies on the tastes of the players.

What’s more significant for these posts, however, is that, like The Edge of Destruction, it doesn’t fit with the usual format. So, as with that story, this is going to be a placeholder post rather than something more detailed. Largely because there isn’t much detail to go into.

Settings: The Ark and Refusis

It’s not until we reach this, the sixth story, that we find a third-season serial that fully survives in its original form. While the story is relatively high-concept and uses an unusual plot device for the show, it’s widely regarded as a middling example of its kind, rather than anything particularly memorable (for good or ill). The biggest problem is that the underlying message of the story can be interpreted negatively if one takes the Human/Monoid relationship as a metaphor for apartheid-era South Africa or for the southern US at the time of broadcast. But so long as we don’t play it that way, this doesn’t have to be insurmountable.

Where & When

The first part of the story is set ten million years in the future, on a vast spaceship travelling between the stars. The second half takes place on the planet Refusis II, seven centuries after the first. This is apparently a very long way from Earth, perhaps not even in our galaxy, although we don’t have any specifics.

Settings: The St Bartholomew's Day Massacre

Following The Daleks' Master Plan, we’re back with another historical, and this time it’s perhaps the most obscure period of history the show has picked for such a story – at least for those of us who aren’t French. It’s another one that tends to divide opinion, with older fans regarding it as above-average for the era, and newer ones generally disdaining it. A lot of that may have to do with the fact that it’s entirely missing, with just a few publicity photos surviving and not even the on-set shots and stills that we normally have. Leaving that aside, let’s see what we can do with a story that not only leaves out the sci-fi elements but is set during a period most players probably have very little knowledge of.

Where & When

For the first time, we return to a previous setting for a full-length story: Paris. As with The Reign of Terror, it’s built around a real-world historical event, so we can state the date precisely: it takes place between the 20th and 24th of August 1572.

Settings: Giza (The Daleks' Master Plan, Pt 2)

The second half of The Dalek’s Master Plan covers even more settings than the first, including, as it does, a whistle-stop journey through time and space in the style of the mid-section of The Chase. However, most of these settings are visited only briefly, so we don’t have scope to say much that’s definitive about them. While the focus of this post will therefore be the section of the story set in Ancient Egypt, I will also take a quick look at the other places we see.

Where & When

Before returning to Kembel for the conclusion of the story, the protagonists make short stops at various locations on 20th-century Earth before arriving on the planet Tigus. This is uninhabited, leaving the date both irrelevant and impossible to determine. The main setting of this half of the story, however, is Ancient Egypt. This section is set in the Giza pyramid complex at an unspecified date in the early 26th century BC. 

Settings: Desperus (The Daleks' Master Plan, Pt 1)

The Daleks’ Master Plan is the longest Doctor Who serial that everyone can agree is a Doctor Who serial. Unfortunately, nine of its twelve episodes are missing, and the whole thing is too large to have been animated yet, so it remains less familiar than many of its counterparts. It’s epic in scope, and those who have experienced it in some unofficial reconstructed form generally rate it as one of the best Hartnell stories. On the other hand, because that epic nature leads to it visiting so many different worlds and time periods, it, like The Chase, is going to have to be split into two for the purposes of this blog. This post covers episodes one to six.

Where & When

The story starts on the planet Kembel, shortly after the events of Mission to the Unknown. The protagonists escape, not in the TARDIS, but a spaceship, and spend a short time on the nearby world of Desperus before heading off towards Earth, and then arriving on Mira, a more distant planet. The date is revealed to be the year 4000, which, as I noted in an earlier post, is probably during, or slightly before, the early years of the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire (the one that enslaved the Ood).

Settings: The Fall of Troy (The Myth Makers)

To the surprise and apparent confusion of some audiences at the time, Mission to the Unknown is followed, not by a continuation of its Dalek plotline, but by an unrelated historical. It’s primarily a comedy and lacks the evident educational remit of the earliest historicals. Like much of season three, it’s entirely missing in its original form, and, unlike the previous two stories, there is no animated or live-action reconstruction. This probably leaves it as one of the more unfamiliar stories to most viewers, and it's generally regarded as an average story by those who know enough about it to have an opinion. The comedic nature and the fact that it isn’t even trying to be historically accurate may present problems in typical time-travelling RPG settings, but let’s see what we can do.

Where & When

The story is based around the end of the Trojan War, as depicted in Homer’s Iliad, rather than as it would have been in real history. Troy, also known as Ilium, did exist, lying just south of the western entrance to the Dardanelles Strait in what is now Turkey. Based on archaeological evidence, the most likely date for the War is around 1180 BC, although, judging from the few surviving stills, the look of the story borrowed more from the Ancient Greece of at least four centuries after that.

Settings: Kembel (Mission to the Unknown)

Mission to the Unknown is an unusual episode. It’s a single 25-minute tale, and thus the shortest regularly broadcast Doctor Who story. Moreover, it does not feature any of the regular cast, functioning instead as a prolonged ‘cold open’ for the next-but-one serial. For this reason, it’s often either skipped or dealt with briefly in written accounts of the Hartnell stories. For the purposes of this blog, however, The Daleks' Master Plan has plenty to cover as it is, leaving this post free to look at Kembel. 

Where & When

The story is explicitly set in the year 4000, on the planet Kembel. This is an unclaimed world not directly controlled or claimed by any external power. The date is notably later than that of any of the earlier Hartnell serials, and The Daleks' Master Plan refers to the fact that technology has advanced since the time of the latter half of The Chase. Later stories will place it as (probably) happening during the early years of the Second Great and Bountiful Human Empire, which reaches its height a little over a century later.